


Gifts and Counterfeits

by ParadifeLoft



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Autistic Character(s), Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Gen, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 20:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1318783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of individual Curufin-centric shortfic snippets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: AU Míriel lives; teeny Curufin bonding with grandma

Her grandson stands in front of her, her youngest, almost easy to confuse with her son he is such a perfect image, if she has had her mind too far in the past. Curufinwe looks up at her, twining tiny fingers together, rocking side to side from one foot to the other, eyes tree-bright like his father and brighter with patient curiosity. Míriel sets aside her embroidery.

"Atar and I were practising letters and he said you used to speak differently," he says, questioning. "He said you know more than he does about it."

She smiles and ducks her head, with a slight flutter of her fingers. “We did,” she says, and she can almost feel the shapes and textures of the words in her mouth welling up, pleasant pressure to hear them spoken as she remembered from her childhood. “You would still be able to understand; the languages are mutually intelligible. See, here - “

She closes her eyes, and rattles off a section of one of the old devotional poems, inflections matching just the cadences of the priests who had sung under the stars in the Outer Lands.

Curufinwe grins and she can tell he understands, can see the movements of his thoughts teasing apart each difference he finds between then and now, even though he stumbles with the _d_ s, until he’s repeating them over and over, trying to get them right.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: teeny Curvo getting dressed for something Very Important

"Love, are you sure the string of stars is appropriate for the High King’s Arrival feast?" Nerdanel asked, when she saw the ornament her husband was affixing to his son’s braids. Clusters of tiny opals and faceted diamonds, linked with the finest chains of silver, sparkled against the fall of Curufinwe’s silk-straight black hair.

“ _No_ ,” Curufinwe said emphatically, shaking his head and causing the gems to give a slight _clink_. He scrutinised his reflection, running a finger against the embroidered flame motif on the cuff of his outer robe’s sleeve. “I want to wear Atar’s stars.”

Feanáro glanced up to his wife. “Not much arguing with that, is there?” Nerdanel raised her eyebrows, but her expression was proud nonetheless when she joined her husband and son before the mirror to look at Curufinwe in his newly-made finery.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Curufin and his father, with Noldorin politics

Curufinwe could tell his father was tired when he pushed open the forge doors - no surprise, considering he could only have just gotten back from his visit to Tirion. He wondered if Feanáro had even greeted the rest of them before changing into his work clothes and coming out here. Likely not, from the silence accompanying his fetching the tools he needed from their drawers.

"News from court then?" he asked after a time, no expectation in his mind or his voice that the answer would be particularly pleasing.

His father looked up from his work, mouth twisted and brows in a frown. “Nolofinwe has been offering monetary support to families of farmers and merchants to buy their loyalty, it seems. He is apparently - ” Feanáro grimaced, ” - under the impression that I am _cultivating_ some political ties to the craftsmen and loremasters I know _professionally_.”

Listening, Curufinwe finished a section of the schematic he was drawing, and gave a noise of irritation. “He sounds worse than the guilds,” he commented. “All with the same talent for assuming ulterior motive and stirring up absurd faction.”

Feanáro raised an eyebrow; Curufinwe caught a tiny hint of a smirk. “Though he would need to roughen his hands if he wanted truly to be one of them.” A slight sneer to it, one Curufinwe shared, and he laughed himself as he glanced over the next few sketch lines.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: a nightmare
> 
> (warning for blood and violence)

When he woke, all the images, all the words - had there even been words, sounds at all, or just silent faces and thoughts traveling from one mind to the next? - they slunk away, water down a drain, leaves slipped from his fingertips on the wind. There was only hollowness in his body and limbs, something scraping at the walls of them, a sickness wriggling in the pit of his stomach.

Curufin rose from his bed, silk of a dressing gown like ghosts on his bare skin, footfalls silent and illuminated by a glow-crystal lamp until he stood alone in the workroom that was the centre of their guest chambers. Tyelkormo was in the next bedchamber over; he wondered why here of all places he’d pushed him away. Sleeping alone was an oddity, specifically accommodated rather than expected.

The desk was empty; his desk, his _borrowed_ desk only, not the one in Himlad or the one under Nargothrond’s stone, though there was stone enough here and more beautiful than his cousin’s city from its age and the greater number of craftsmen to leave their mark that such age would allow. But his father’s notes were not there - he did not expect them to be, not when he pushed away idle musings as to _where_ , exactly, whenever they tugged at his mind. And none of it consoled much. His stomach; the inner twists of his mind, still held the imprint thought of grasping Men come to call; Curufin selling the papers (what was their importance? he did not know, only that they were his father’s, and that was enough), trading one oath for another.

His brothers’ swords had run him through. Run him through and somehow he’d not died, thought blood slid down his legs and pooled at his feet. The dream had gone, and there was nothing but night with its shadows, warm and enveloping, the hum of the never-sleeping city around him. He did not look down.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Curufin/Adûnakhôr in the AU where Numenóreans invade Valinor (several generations earlier than canon) in an alliance with a portion of the Noldor (who have broken the sons of Feanor out of the Halls of Mandos) to depose the Valar.

"It is a presumptuous name."

Curufinwe watched the king closely, without falter - the composure of his movements was too rigid, he decided, even translated through whatever difference (subtle, but there) there was obscuring his usual ability to read another.

But in the movement of his eyes, the pause, the deliberate gaze straight at him, Curufinwe could tell, this king of Men could hear the meanings underneath. Was no fool.

"Is your concern for the Ñoldor’s sovereignty in sum; or for your own claim?" the king asked. A slight cock of his head, dark hair brushing richly-embroidered cloth at his shoulder; that same direct stare. Curufinwe put a greater hint of ice into his own gaze, something never in short supply.

"My aims are not to subjugate the populace of Amatthâni," he continued, plain of any artifice or subtlety. "They are deposition of tyrants. Do not worry for the Ñoldor unless they would take arms like those in our custody."

Curufinwe raised an eyebrow - neither of them wished more fighting, army on their shores or no. While Adûnaic remained foreign to the Eldar and their own languages to the Adûnaim… He wondered whether the king recognised just how much power he rested in Curufinwe’s lap. How long it might take him to rectify that. But while it lasted, there were his brothers, and an uncertain throne.

More meetings would be required.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding language:
> 
> "It is a presumptuous name" refers to the fact that "Adûnakhôr" is Adûnaic (the common/non-prestige language of the Numenóreans/Adûnaim, not historically used by royals/nobility until Adûnakhor's time) for "Lord of the West", i.e. what's usually Manwe's title.  
> "Amatthâni" is Adûnaic for "the land of Aman".


End file.
